Category: Tom Baxter

This year, when you sit down to watch the bowl games or the Christmas shows, you won’t have to worry about your children being frightened by scary black-and-white attack ads. Cherish that. It may not be that way next year.

Trump’s opponents have trumpeted Democratic victories in the Kentucky and Louisiana governor’s races as a personal defeat for the president because he campaigned for Republicans Matt Bevin in Kentucky and Eddie Rispone in Louisiana. Trump’s supporters have responded that he made these races closer than they would have been, and credit him for the strong showing of down-ballot Republicans in both states. There’s a little smattering of truth in both these arguments, but not enough to make these races turn out any differently than they would if somebody else was president.

You could almost get the impression, reading Twitter, that so far the Republicans have been more interested in the Democratic presidential debates than the Democrats. That’s about to change, as the nomination process goes into high gear.

If you haven’t done so already, take a minute to compare your last two electricity bills with what you paid in September and October of last year. You’re probably all too aware how hot it’s been, but the financial impact of that may still be a shock.

When U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson let it be known that he planned to introduce one last big bill before his retirement at the end of this year, there was some speculation he might try to break the knot around background checks. That wasn’t the legislation he introduced last week, but his square-one proposal could prove to have more knot-breaking potential than meets the eye.

Calling on those interested in being appointed to fill out Isakson’s U.S. Senate term was an example of the canniness Gov. Brian Kemp has shown on several occasions. Making it “open and transparent” — i.e., doing it all online and posting the resumes as they come in — was a masterstroke.

What does the governor know that the rest of us don’t? That question has floated rather ominously over the Golden Dome since Brian Kemp last month directed agency heads to start planning for a leaner tomorrow.

The idea behind business courts — the idea Georgia voters bought into last year when they approved a statewide business court — is that they provide a way for big, complicated lawsuits involving businesses to be settled in the fairest, most efficient way. That proposition is about to face a stern test, as the Gwinnett business court becomes the venue for the state’s opioid case.

When the history of whatever comes next in Georgia politics gets written some day, the first chapter is likely to dwell on two events: last year’s governor’s race and the fallout from Sen. Johnny Isakson’s resignation. Both are part of a generational shift which may turn out to be as meaningful as the long drift from Democratic to Republican dominance. Or even more so.

What is crazy, after all? People’s ideas about that can differ as much as the songs by Patsy Cline and Gnarls Barkley. That’s what makes it such a difficult subject to approach politically.

On a day when President Trump has addressed the nation to condemn “racism, bigotry and white supremacy,” it might not seem appropriate to begin with Champ Bailey’s Pro Football Hall of Fame induction speech on Saturday. But the former Georgia Bulldog great spoke about that very subject with expertise, as he put it. It’s something, he said, which black men “have more expertise in than any aspect of our lives.”

Imagine a 3D printer that can build a 100-foot-tall rocket, or robots made of polymers and muscle tissue. Somebody already has, and is moving forward on the idea.